Lucia di Lammermoor - San Diego Opera Lucia di Lammermoor In the Classroom Donizetti and Lucia di Lammermoor Donizetti was born in 1797 in the town of Bergamo in Northern Italy. He had the great fortune to be the student of Johann Simon Mayr, a Bavarian composer and teacher who was a leading figure in the development of serious opera in Italy. After this strong compositional foundation, he attended the conservatory in Bologna and studied with teachers that Rossini had worked with just a few years before. And, like Rossini, he ended up in Naples working for the Teatro San Carlo after proving himself with the success of one of his early operas in Rome. His work in Naples including a professorship at the Naples conservatory, but during these years he frequently had the opportunity to write operas for various theatres throughout Italy: in Milan, Palermo, Florence and Rome. It was his opera Anna Bolena, about the second wife of Henry VIII that shot him to fame with its production at the Teatro Carcano in Milan.

The opera was so well thought of that it was repeated in Paris and London and generated in those cities a demand for more of the composer’s works. By the early 1830s Donizetti was an international figure. This brings us to the period immediately prior to the composition of Lucia. At this time Donizetti was associating himself with the greatest singers of the age: the sopranos Giuditta Pasta and Maria Malibran, the tenor Giovanni Rubini, the baritone Giorgio Ronconi and the bass Filippo Galli. These singers were the true operatic superstars of their day. In 1835 he was invited to Paris where he had the opportunity to write his first opera for a French audience. While there he absorbed the international flavor of that city, meeting some of the greatest composers and artists of the day, including Frederic Chopin. Returning from Paris to Naples, he embarked on the score for Lucia di Lammermoor, intended for the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, the center of most of his activity. For this opera he was going to have two more great singers in the cast: the soprano Fanny Persiani and the tenor Gilbert Duprez.

But the management of the theatre was badly run, there were delays in the promised libretto, and Donizetti was getting increasingly impatient. He was finally paired with the great librettist Salvatore Cammarano with whom he wrote a number of further operas and who himself became one of the important early librettists for Giuseppe Verdi. Cammarano took Donizetti’s chosen subject, The Bride of Lammermoor, and reduced it to its most basic plot. In the process some important characters in the Scott original were lost, but the story was tightened and made far more dramatic in its overall impact. Donizetti completed the score in six weeks getting it ready for the stage in time for its premiere on September 26, 1835. In the midst of the flurry of compositional activity during that summer, the king of Naples fired the entire management of the theatre and funding for the company was lost and then mysteriously restored. But all went well on opening night, and Lucia was an instant success. Success was probably due as much to the greatness of the singers as it was to Donizetti’s brilliant score.

Persiani was in fine voice and her performance of the famous mad scene brought the audience to near frenzy. Duprez was similarly well received, as it was this tenor who began taking high Cs from the chest voice rather than from the weaker, ethereal head voice preferred by earlier tenors. The excitement and drama of the sound was hard to resist and by the 1840s every Italian tenor was copying him, making it possible for Verdi to write some of his most demanding tenor roles. The opera captured the imagination of the Romantic audience, fulfilling their demand for gothic stories, supernatural chills and fine singing all at the same time. And although the opera went through a period of nearly fatal cuts by well-meaning producers, it has survived intact and is performed today to universal acclaim by singers who can meet Donizetti’s vocal and dramatic demands. After the success of Lucia his operas continued to conquer Europe, with one great opera house after another producing his ever popular works. But in 1835 his life took a personal turn towards tragedy, with both his parents dying within weeks of each other, and his wife Virginia dying of cholera during a frightening epidemic.

On top of that, none of his three children lived beyond a few days after birth and he himself was diagnosed with syphilis. We notice that he set himself a frantic pace for work during his last years before the effects of the disease began to interrupt his daily life in 1844. In that time he composed Roberto Devereux, La favorite, La fille du regiment, Maria Padilla, Linda di Chamounix, Dom Sebastien and Don Pasquale. He lasted four long and painfully tragic years suffering terribly with the effects of his illness, in and out of sanitoriums until 1848 when he finally died. The composer’s works were so well thought of that Hector Berlioz remarked, “One can no longer speak of the opera houses of Paris but only of the opera houses of Monsieur Donizetti!” It was by his operas that all young Italian composers were forced to be compared both by the fanatical operatic public and impresarios throughout Europe. It was the opera Nabucco by another young Northern Italian which shared the La Scala season of 1842 with Donizetti’s Maria Padilla, signaling the appearance of the next great composer of opera: Giuseppe Verdi.

Sir Walter Scott and The Bride of Lammermoor Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) was the most influential novelist of his time. His works inspired such disparate artists as the Brontë sisters, Victor Hugo and Alexander Pushkin. It seems that during his lifetime, everyone was reading his novels. Scott was so prolific and so universally read in his own time that he made quite a living for himself. From his teenage years he was fascinated with the lore, ballads and legends of his native Scotland and he, like his contemporaries the Grimm Brothers in Germany, collected these materials with great enthusiasm. He was especially drawn to stories of the Middle Ages, stories of knights in shining armor, ladies in distress and tales of the crusades. He was also fascinated by the Reformation era in Scotland, the deposing of the last Stuart King, James II and the accession of William and Mary in the 17th century. The bloody feuds of this period, the attempt by James to force England back to Catholicism and the last gasp attempt of Scotland to have its own identity apart from England were all part of the history and atmosphere of The Bride of Lammermoor, published in 1819.

In this novel Scott seems to have made a conscious effort to write something quite different from other of his novels like Ivanhoe, published at about the same time. The Bride of Lammermoor is dark and Gothic with supernatural elements and bizarre turns of events that stimulated the imaginations of 19th century readers. Scott is at his best dealing with these more grotesque elements of the novel, especially in his descriptions of the brooding Scottish landscape and the ruined family castle of the Ravenswoods, Wolf’s Crag. These elements are all part and parcel of the Romantic spirit, of which Scott was both purveyor and wide-eyed consumer. Here is the description of the funeral of the Lord of Ravenswood at the moment that his son Edgar, the hero of the novel, gives his father over to the grave: In the countenance of the young man alone, resentment seemed for the moment overpowered by the deep agony with which he beheld his nearest, and almost his only, friend consigned to the tomb of his ancestry.

A relative observed him turn deadly pale, when, all rites being now duly observed, it became the duty of the chief mourner to lower down into the charnel vault, where mouldering coffins showed their tattered velvet and decayed plating, the head of the corpse which was to be their partner in corruption. He stept to the youth and offered his assistance, which, by a mute motion, Edgar Ravenswood rejected. Firmly, and without a tear, he performed that last duty. The stone was laid on the sepulchre, the door of the aisle was locked, and the youth took possession of its massive key. Such atmospherics weren’t lost on contemporary readers and not just in the British Isles. The whole of Europe was reading Scott’s novels in translation and he was particularly inspiring to Italian composers of opera, whose essentially Romantic art form was starving for such scenarios.

Other works by Scott which have been used as a source for opera are: The Lady of the Lake (Rossini, 1819), Guy Mannering (Boildieu, 1825, as La dame blanche), Rob Roy (Flotow, 1836), The Heart of Midlothian (Carafa, 1829), Ivanhoe (Marschner, 1829; Pacini, 1832; Nicolai, 1840; Sullivan, 1891), Kenilworth (Auber, 1823; Donizetti, 1829) and The Fair Maid of Perth (Bizet, 1867). The Music of Lucia di Lammermoor It is instructive from a historical standpoint to have Rossini’s Barber immediately precede Donizetti’s tragic Lucia in our 2006 season. We can see and hear within a month’s length of time just how much Italian opera progressed in the twenty years separating these two standard works of the repertory (1816 and 1835).

It cannot be denied that all Italian composers of opera after Rossini had to incorporate his ideas and techniques or suffer the consequences. His operas so defined the art form that to ignore his dominating influence was to lose a significant share of the audience market! Therefore in Donizetti’s early operas, both tragic and comic, the marked influence of Rossini can be strongly felt. As he gained confidence and experience, an individual style asserted itself and it is this style that permeates the score of Lucia di Lammermoor. The overall tinto or ‘color’ of the orchestration is appropriately dark. The Prelude begins with a choir of four horns in B-flat minor, immediately establishing the somber character of the work. It is followed by a chorus of men only, and solo passages by the lower-voiced principals, Enrico, Normanno and Raimondo. The first ‘lightness’ of color is Lucia’s soprano voice and we’re not to hear it until the second scene. Speaking of darkness, Donizetti stretches the limits of writing whole pieces of the score in minor keys, something not commonly done at the time.

Lucia’s first aria, “Regnava nel silencio”, is in D minor (even though the key signature is for D major!) and although it doesn’t remain in that key for long it establishes the haunted, melancholy character of the heroine. Orchestral textures throughout also tend towards the dark: note the introduction and the first twelve bars of Edgardo’s aria “Fra poco a me ricovero”. It is unusually introduced by three horns, two bassoons and timpani. When the strings enter on “una pietosa lagrima” it is not the entire string orchestra, but the violas and basses, creating an unusually thick texture, responding to the pathetic nature of the text. It is in similar instances of text setting that Donizetti’s talent shines. No significant poetic image is not ‘painted’ in the orchestra or ornamented in the vocal line. Listen to his setting of the text “ecco su quell margine l’ombra mostrarsi a me” (“and there at the edge of the pool the ghost appeared to me”) in her opening aria, “Regnava”.

The fountain is ‘painted’ for our ears in the brief cadenza on ‘margine’; the word for ‘shade’, or ‘ghost’ (ombra) is given to the lowest note in the passage. Examples like this abound. The most spectacular musical effects occur in the famous mad scene, of course. Seemingly every human emotion passes through Lucia’s mind in this scene, and melodic reminders of her love duet with Edgardo in Act I provide the pathos necessary for the audience to identify with her and her sense of lost love. Originally the scene was to be shared with the glass harmonica, an idea evidently discarded by the composer just before the premiere. Its eerie harmonics would certainly have produced a wonderful effect, but the flute is much more practical and, frankly, musical. (The glass harmonica can be heard in Beverly Sills’ recording of Lucia, a Westminster album recently re-released on CD). Donizetti perfectly captures Lucia’s disintegration through incredibly effective music, and although Edgardo ends the opera, this scene is the evening’s payoff!

CONNECT WITH US Lucia di Lammermoor, opera | Details | AllMusic Lucia di Lammermoor, opera google+ Description by Rita Laurance From Sir Walter Scott's melodramatic novel The Bride of Lammermoor, librettist Salvatore Cammarano cobbled together one of the most contrived and ridiculous plots in all of opera. The opera is saved and made great by Donizetti 's flood of fabulous music, which includes one of the greatest of all coloratura parts in the title role. It's got blood and thunder, great choruses, the sextet "Chi mi frena," and above all, the celebrated Mad Scene. Scott's novel had already inspired three operatic treatments by the time of this one. Cammarano had not had much work as a librettist previous to his writing of Lucia, but afterwards he and Donizetti became close partners. Lucia di Lammermoor remains one of Donizetti 's most popular works. In the latter part of 1834, Donizetti signed a contract with the Royal Theaters of Naples to compose three operas, the first of which he was to have ready by July of 1835.

After a lengthy process, the premiere of Lucia took place on September 26 at the Teatro San Carlo of Naples. The audience gave the opera an almost ecstatic reception. They cheered each of the individual arias during the opera, and Donizetti and all of the cast were called out for repeated ovations. The music of the opera was composed with the talents and abilities of the original cast in mind. As the lead soprano in the role of Lucia, Donizetti had chosen Fanny Tacchinardi-Persiani, who was known for her technical abilities. She created the role of Lucia during its initial run, and it was for her that Donizetti composed the incredibly difficult mad scene, which is filled with vocal pyrotechnics and fioritura. From the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, this mad scene has been a showcase for sopranos with technical agility. But it is also an eerily dramatic scene, filled with psychological overtones. Many of the tunes are taken from earlier songs in the opera and twisted in order to show Lucia's demented state of mind. The choruses and narrative flow directly into Lucia's recitative and double aria, showing us her vulnerability right before her death.

And the Tomb scene for Edgardo follows, with beautiful, dramatic music. With his suicide, the lovers are joined in death. The other famous piece from Lucia di Lammermoor is the sextet at the end of Act Two. This is the climax to the other two acts, and is one of the most powerful and dramatic moments of the opera. It begins with the entrance of Edgardo, as he enters the castle of the Lammermoor to find the entire Lammermoor clan gathered in honor of Lucia's wedding. The emotional conflict between the various characters ignites into an energetic ensemble piece. Parts/Movements No. 1a, Percorrete le spiagge vicine No. 1b, Tu sei turbato No. 1c, Cruda, funesta smania [Cruel, deadly frenzy] No. 1d, La pietade in suo favore No. 2a, Ancor non giunse? No. 2b, Regnava nel silenzio No. 2c, Quando rapito in estasi No. 3a, Egli s'avanza No. 3d, Ah! Verrano a te No. 4, Lucia fra poco a te verrà No.

5a, Appressati, Lucia No. 5b, Il pallor funesto No. 5c, Soffriva nel piantò No. 5d, Se tradirmi No. 6, Ebben?... Di tua speranza No. 7a, Per te d'immenso giubilo No. 7b, Per poco fra le tenebre No. 7c, Dov'e Lucia? No. 8, Chi mi frena (Sextet) No. 9, T'allontana, sciagurato No. 10, Orrida e questa notte (Wolf's Crag Scene) No. 11, D'immenso giubilo No. 13a, Il dolce suono No.

13b, Ardon gl'incensi Met Opera: Shagimuratova Goes Brilliantly Mad In 'Lucia di Lammermoor' | The Huffington Post Met Opera: Shagimuratova Goes Brilliantly Mad In 'Lucia di Lammermoor' 03/17/2015 12:16 pm ET | Updated May 17, 2015 Wilborn Hampton Author, theater critic Donizetti may be one of the best things to happen to Sir Walter Scott. And with the return of Lucia di Lammermoor to the Met Opera stage last night, Albina Shagimuratova is one of the best things now going for Donizetti. The Russian soprano captivated a first night audience with her bravura performance as the doomed Scottish lass, culminating in a heart-stopping Mad Scene that can take its place among those of the storied singers who have made the role a signature of their virtuosity.

Donizetti wrote his opera in 1835, with a libretto by Salvadore Cammarano based on Scott's novel The Bride of Lammermoor, and it became an instant success with the character of Lucia Ashton becoming the personification of a woman thwarted in love by a father who demands she marry another against her will in an effort to save the family's fortunes. The plot is a simple one. Lucia has fallen in love with Edgardo di Ravenswood, who is the mortal enemy of her father, Enrico Ashton di Lammermoor. Lucia and Edgardo plight their secret troth, but Enrico forges a letter from Edgardo saying he has fallen in love with somebody else, and Lucia reluctantly agrees to marry Arturo, her father's choice. This turn of events drives Lucia to a complete mental meltdown and it all ends in bloody murder, death and suicide. The opera, with some of the most beautiful and dramatic music of the Romantic era, became so familiar to 19th-century Europe that several novelists alluded to it in their work.

Flaubert has Emma Bovary attend a performance of Lucia in Madame Bovary, and Tolstoy wrote a description of a performance in Anna Karenina. The roster of sopranos who have sung Lucia to stake their claim to bel canto credentials is long -- Pons, Melba, Callas and Sutherland to name just a few from the past, and more recently at the Met, Natalie Dessay, Diana Damrau and Anna Netrebko. Shagimuratova can join the list. She is apprehensive in her opening aria "Regnava nel silenzio" as she recounts seeing the ghost of a woman who was murdered near the fountain where she waits to meet Edgardo. Then when her thoughts turn to Edgardo, she beams and sings like a woman in love, full of joy and with silvery runs in "Quando, rapito in estasi." The role is a demanding one, especially in the Mad Scene, a long passage of vocal dexterity that is one of the most liltingly lovely yet desperate pieces of music in all opera.

Shagimuratova, singing in only her second role at the Met, hits every note squarely with ringing brilliance, and with only a solo flute for accompaniment, exquisitely played by Stefan Ragnar Hoskuldsson, evokes all the pathos of a deranged mind struggling with an ill-fated love. The Met has assembled an excellent all-round cast for this round of performances of Lucia, which will be repeated seven more times this season. The tenor Joseph Calleja carried on in the role of Edgardo, though an announcement at the beginning said he had been suffering from the flu. There was indeed some strain in Calleja's opening act duet with Shagimuratova ("Ah! Verranno a te sull'aure") but he became vocally stronger as the evening went on. By the third act, Calleja's voice had regained its brightness and the back-to-back arias in the final scene -- "Tombe degli avi miei" and "Fra poco a me ricovero" -- were wonderfully moving and tragic. The Italian baritone Luca Salsi, also in only his second Met appearance, was splendid as Enrico.

From the opening "Cruda, funesta smania" his rich powerful voice conveyed a man enraged yet one used to commanding and having his way. When he and Calleja face off at the end of Act 2, they circle each other like snarling dogs in their rousing duet. And the English basso Alastair Miles was excellent as Raimondo, the Lammermoor chaplain and Lucia's tutor. Maurizio Benini conducted the Met Orchestra in a well-paced reading of the score. If the overture began with a certain deliberateness of foreboding, Benini proceeded at almost a gallop as the manhunt of the opening scene gets under way and the tempo throughout remained in step with the action onstage. Mary Zimmerman's 2007 production, which moves the story to the 19th century, still conjures the bleakness of the wild and barren Scottish countryside, though there's not a kilt in sight. She actually brings the ghost in Lucia's story onstage, slowly wandering around the set before disappearing in the fountain, a theatrical addition that can be distracting to audience and soprano alike.

But the grand staircase with a minstrel in the final act gives Lucia a spectacularly dramatic entrance for the Mad Scene. More: Metropolitan Opera: Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor - WQXR Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor Brian Wise Albina Shagimuratova in the title role of Donizetti's 'Lucia di Lammermoor' (Cory Weaver/Metropolitan Opera) Saturday at 12 pm, tune in to hear Russian coloratura soprano Albina Shagimuratova as Lucia in Gaetano Donizetti's masterpiece, with tenor Joseph Calleja as her love interest, Edgardo. Donizetti reportedly composed Lucia di Lammermoor with the coloratura soprano Fanny Persiani in mind, and the role has since become a calling card for the great coloratura sopranos of the world. Lucia's famous mad scene is considered one of the great opportunities for a coloratura to exhibit her virtuosity. The opera centers on Lucia and Edgardo, who are breathlessly, desperately in love. But their two clans are bitter rivals, so Lucia’s villainous brother Enrico sets out to kill his young sister’s romance.

And he deploys every devious device he can muster, including lies, forgery, and finally the false revelation of Edgardo’s infidelity. Lucia is mentally crushed and destroyed, driven to madness and murder before she dies of a broken heart. For its revival of the Met's Mary Zimmerman's production, the cast also includes the baritone Luca Salsi and the bass Alastair Miles. Maurizio Benini conducts. Cast: Donizetti and Lucia di Lammermoor Donizetti was born in 1797 in the town of Bergamo in Northern Italy. He had the great fortune to be the student of Johann Simon Mayr, a Bavarian composer and teacher who was a leading figure in the development of serious opera in Italy. After this strong compositional foundation, he attended the conservatory in Bologna and studied with teachers that Rossini had worked with just a few years before. And, like Rossini, he ended up in Naples working for the Teatro San Carlo after proving himself with the success of one of his early operas in Rome.

His work in Naples including a professorship at the Naples conservatory, but during these years he frequently had the opportunity to write operas for various theatres throughout Italy: in Milan, Palermo, Florence and Rome. It was his opera Anna Bolena, about the second wife of Henry VIII that shot him to fame with its production at the Teatro Carcano in Milan. The opera was so well thought of that it was repeated in Paris and London and generated in those cities a demand for more of the composer’s works. By the early 1830s Donizetti was an international figure. This brings us to the period immediately prior to the composition of Lucia. At this time Donizetti was associating himself with the greatest singers of the age: the sopranos Giuditta Pasta and Maria Malibran, the tenor Giovanni Rubini, the baritone Giorgio Ronconi and the bass Filippo Galli. These singers were the true operatic superstars of their day. In 1835 he was invited to Paris where he had the opportunity to write his first opera for a French audience.

While there he absorbed the international flavor of that city, meeting some of the greatest composers and artists of the day, including Frederic Chopin. Returning from Paris to Naples, he embarked on the score for Lucia di Lammermoor, intended for the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, the center of most of his activity. For this opera he was going to have two more great singers in the cast: the soprano Fanny Persiani and the tenor Gilbert Duprez. But the management of the theatre was badly run, there were delays in the promised libretto, and Donizetti was getting increasingly impatient. He was finally paired with the great librettist Salvatore Cammarano with whom he wrote a number of further operas and who himself became one of the important early librettists for Giuseppe Verdi. Cammarano took Donizetti’s chosen subject, The Bride of Lammermoor, and reduced it to its most basic plot. In the process some important characters in the Scott original were lost, but the story was tightened and made far more dramatic in its overall impact.

Donizetti completed the score in six weeks getting it ready for the stage in time for its premiere on September 26, 1835. In the midst of the flurry of compositional activity during that summer, the king of Naples fired the entire management of the theatre and funding for the company was lost and then mysteriously restored. But all went well on opening night, and Lucia was an instant success. Success was probably due as much to the greatness of the singers as it was to Donizetti’s brilliant score. Persiani was in fine voice and her performance of the famous mad scene brought the audience to near frenzy. Duprez was similarly well received, as it was this tenor who began taking high Cs from the chest voice rather than from the weaker, ethereal head voice preferred by earlier tenors. The excitement and drama of the sound was hard to resist and by the 1840s every Italian tenor was copying him, making it possible for Verdi to write some of his most demanding tenor roles. The opera captured the imagination of the Romantic audience, fulfilling their demand for gothic stories, supernatural chills and fine singing all at the same time.

And although the opera went through a period of nearly fatal cuts by well-meaning producers, it has survived intact and is performed today to universal acclaim by singers who can meet Donizetti’s vocal and dramatic demands. After the success of Lucia his operas continued to conquer Europe, with one great opera house after another producing his ever popular works. But in 1835 his life took a personal turn towards tragedy, with both his parents dying within weeks of each other, and his wife Virginia dying of cholera during a frightening epidemic. On top of that, none of his three children lived beyond a few days after birth and he himself was diagnosed with syphilis. We notice that he set himself a frantic pace for work during his last years before the effects of the disease began to interrupt his daily life in 1844. In that time he composed Roberto Devereux, La favorite, La fille du regiment, Maria Padilla, Linda di Chamounix, Dom Sebastien and Don Pasquale. He lasted four long and painfully tragic years suffering terribly with the effects of his illness, in and out of sanitoriums until 1848 when he finally died.

The composer’s works were so well thought of that Hector Berlioz remarked, “One can no longer speak of the opera houses of Paris but only of the opera houses of Monsieur Donizetti!” It was by his operas that all young Italian composers were forced to be compared both by the fanatical operatic public and impresarios throughout Europe. It was the opera Nabucco by another young Northern Italian which shared the La Scala season of 1842 with Donizetti’s Maria Padilla, signaling the appearance of the next great composer of opera: Giuseppe Verdi. Joan Sutherland, Soprano Known as ‘La Stupenda,’ Dies at 83 - The New York Times The New York Times Music |Joan Sutherland, Flawless Soprano, Is Dead at 83 Search Joan Sutherland , one of the most acclaimed sopranos of the 20th century, a singer of such power and range that she was crowned “La Stupenda,” died on Sunday at her home in Switzerland, near Montreux. She was 83. Her death was confirmed by her close friend the mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne.

It was Italy’s notoriously picky critics who dubbed the Australian-born Ms. Sutherland the Stupendous One after her Italian debut, in Venice in 1960. And for 40 years the name endured with opera lovers around the world. Her 1961 debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, in Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor,” generated so much excitement that standees began lining up at 7:30 that morning. Her singing of the Mad Scene drew a thunderous 12-minute ovation. Ms. Sutherland’s singing was founded on astonishing technique. Her voice was evenly produced throughout an enormous range, from a low G to effortless flights above high C. She could spin lyrical phrases with elegant legato, subtle colorings and expressive nuances. Her sound was warm, vibrant and resonant, without any forcing. Indeed, her voice was so naturally large that at the start of her career Ms. Sutherland seemed destined to become a Wagnerian dramatic soprano. Following her first professional performances, in 1948, during a decade of steady growth and intensive training, Ms.

Sutherland developed incomparable facility for fast runs, elaborate roulades and impeccable trills. She did not compromise the passagework, as many do, by glossing over scurrying runs, but sang almost every note fully. Her abilities led Richard Bonynge, the Sydney-born conductor and vocal coach whom she married in 1954, to persuade her early on to explore the early-19th-century Italian opera of the bel canto school. She became a major force in its revitalization. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Bel canto (which translates as “beautiful song” or “beautiful singing”) denotes an approach to singing exemplified by evenness through the range and great agility. The term also refers to the early-19th-century Italian operas steeped in bel canto style. Outside of Italy, the repertory had languished for decades when Maria Callas appeared in the early 1950s and demonstrated that operas like “Lucia di Lammermoor” and Bellini’s “Norma” were not just showcases for coloratura virtuosity but musically elegant and dramatically gripping works as well. Even as a young man, Mr.

Bonynge had uncommon knowledge of bel canto repertory and style. Ms. Sutherland and Mr. Bonynge, who is four years younger than she, met in Sydney at a youth concert and became casual friends. They were reacquainted later in London, where Ms. Sutherland settled with her mother in 1951 to attend the Royal College of Music. There Mr. Bonynge became the major influence on her development. Ms. Sutherland used to say she thought of herself and her husband as a duo and that she didn’t talk of her career, “but of ours.” In a 1961 profile in The New York Times Magazine she said she initially had “a big rather wild voice” that was not heavy enough for Wagner, although she did not realize this until she heard “Wagner sung as it should be.” “Richard had decided — long before I agreed with him — that I was a coloratura,” she said. “We fought like cats and dogs over it,” she said, adding, “It took Richard three years to convince me.” In her repertory choices Ms.

Sutherland ranged widely during the 1950s, singing lighter lyric Mozart roles like the Countess in “Le Nozze di Figaro” and heavier Verdi roles like Amelia in “Un Ballo in Maschera.” Even then, astute listeners realized that she was en route to becoming something extraordinary. In a glowing and perceptive review of her performance as Desdemona in Verdi’s “Otello” at Covent Garden in London in late 1957, the critic Andrew Porter, writing in The Financial Times, commended her for not “sacrificing purity to power.” This is “not her way,” Mr. Porter wrote, “and five years on we shall bless her for her not endeavoring now to be ‘exciting’ but, instead, lyrical and beautiful.” Photo Joan Sutherland in 1965 in her signature role Lucia di Lammermoor. She helped restore bel canto operas to popularity. Credit Bob Ganley/NBC She became an international sensation after her career-defining performance in the title role of “Lucia di Lammermoor” at Covent Garden — its first presentation there since 1925 — which opened on Feb.

17, 1959. The production was directed by Franco Zeffirelli and conducted by the Italian maestro Tullio Serafin, a longtime Callas colleague, who elicited from the 32-year-old soprano a vocally resplendent and dramatically affecting portrayal of the trusting, unstable young bride of Lammermoor. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Mr. Porter, reviewing the performance in The Financial Times, wrote that the brilliance of Ms. Sutherland’s singing was to be expected by this point. The surprise, he explained, was the new dramatic presence she brought to bear. “The traces of self-consciousness, of awkwardness on the stage, had disappeared; and at the same time she sang more freely, more powerfully, more intensely — and also more bewitchingly — than ever before.” This triumph was followed in 1960 by landmark portrayals in neglected bel canto operas by Bellini: Elvira in “I Puritani” at the Glyndebourne Festival (the first presentation in England since 1887) and “La Sonnambula” at Covent Garden (the company’s first production in half a century). Ms.

Sutherland’s American debut came in November 1960 in the title role of Handel’s “Alcina” at the Dallas Opera, the first American production of this now-popular work. Her distinguished Decca recording of “Lucia di Lammermoor,” with an exceptional cast conducted by John Pritchard, was released in 1961, the year of her enormously anticipated Metropolitan Opera debut in that same work, on Nov. 26. At Ms. Sutherland’s first appearance, before she had sung a note, there was an enthusiastic ovation. Following the first half of Lucia’s Mad Scene in the final act, which culminated in a glorious high E-flat, the ovation lasted almost 5 minutes. When she finished the scene and her crazed, dying Lucia collapsed to the stage floor, the ovation lasted 12 minutes. Reviewing the performance in The New York Times, Harold C. Schonberg wrote that other sopranos might have more power or a sweeter tone, but “there is none around who has the combination of technique, vocal security, clarity and finesse that Miss Sutherland can summon.” Even for some admirers, though, there were limitations to her artistry.

Her diction was often indistinct. After receiving steady criticism for this shortcoming, Ms. Sutherland worked to correct it, and sang with crisper enunciation in the 1970s. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Privacy Policy She was also sometimes criticized for delivering dramatically bland performances. At 5-foot-9, she was a large woman, with long arms and large hands, and a long, wide face. As her renown increased, she insisted that designers create costumes for her that compensated for her figure, which, as she admitted self-deprecatingly in countless interviews, was somewhat flat in the bust but wide in the rib cage. Certain dresses could make her look like “a large column walking about the stage,” she wrote in “The Autobiography of Joan Sutherland: A Prima Donna’s Progress” (1997). Paradoxically, Mr. Bonynge contributed to the sometimes dramatically uninvolved quality of her performances. By the mid-1960s he was her conductor of choice, often part of the deal when she signed a contract.

Trained as a pianist and vocal coach, he essentially taught himself conducting. Even after extended experience, he was not the maestro opera fans turned to for arresting performances of Verdi’s “Traviata.” But he thoroughly understood the bel canto style and was attuned to every component of his wife’s voice. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Yet if urging her to be sensible added to her longevity, it sometimes resulted in her playing it safe. Other conductors prodded Ms. Sutherland to sing with greater intensity: for example, Georg Solti, in an acclaimed 1967 recording of Verdi’s Requiem with the Vienna Philharmonic and the Vienna State Opera Chorus, and Zubin Mehta, who enticed Ms. Sutherland into recording the title role in Puccini’s “Turandot,” which she never sang onstage, for a 1972 recording. Both of these projects featured the tenor Luciano Pavarotti, who would become an ideal partner for Ms. Sutherland in the bel canto repertory. Ms. Sutherland’s fiery Turandot suggests she had dramatic abilities that were never tapped. Joan Alston Sutherland was born on Nov.

7, 1926, in Sydney, where the family lived in a modest house overlooking the harbor. The family garden and the rich array of wildflowers on the hillside near the beach inspired her lifelong love of gardening. Her mother, Muriel Sutherland, was a fine mezzo-soprano who had studied with Mathilde Marchesi, the teacher of the Australian soprano Nellie Melba. Though too shy for the stage, Ms. Sutherland’s mother did vocal exercises every day and was her daughter’s principal teacher throughout her adolescence. Photo Joan Sutherland and Luciano Pavarotti in “I Puritani” at the Metropolitan Opera in 1976. Credit Associated Press Ms. Sutherland’s father, William, a Scottish-born tailor, had been married before. His first wife died during the influenza epidemic after World War I, leaving him with three daughters and a son. Ms. Sutherland was the only child of his second marriage. He died on the day of Ms. Sutherland’s sixth birthday. He had just given her a new bathing suit and she wanted to try it out. Though feeling unwell, he climbed down to the beach with her and, upon returning, collapsed in his wife’s arms.

Joan, along with her youngest half-sister and their mother, moved into the home of an aunt and uncle, who had sufficient room and a big garden in the Sydney suburb of Woollahra. Although Ms. Sutherland’s mother soon recognized her daughter’s gifts, she pegged her as a mezzo-soprano. At 16, facing the reality of having to support herself, Ms. Sutherland completed a secretarial course and took office jobs, while keeping up her vocal studies. She began lessons in Sydney with Aida Dickens, who convinced her that she was a soprano, very likely a dramatic soprano. Ms. Sutherland began singing oratorios and radio broadcasts and made a notable debut in 1947 as Purcell’s Dido in Sydney. In 1951, with prize money from winning a prestigious vocal competition, she and her mother moved to London, where Ms. Sutherland enrolled at the opera school of the Royal College of Music.

The next year, after three previous unsuccessful auditions, she was accepted into the Royal Opera at Covent Garden and made her debut as the First Lady in Mozart’s “Zauberflöte.” In the company’s landmark 1952 production of Bellini’s “Norma,” starring Maria Callas, Ms. Sutherland sang the small role of Clotilde, Norma’s confidante. “Now look after your voice,” Callas advised her at the time, adding, “We’re going to hear great things of you.” “I lusted to sing Norma after being in those performances with Callas,” Ms. Sutherland said in a 1998 New York Times interview . “But I knew that I could not sing it the way she did. It was 10 years before I sang the role. During that time I studied it, sang bits of it, and worked with Richard.

But I had to evolve my own way to sing it, and I would have wrecked my voice to ribbons had I tried to sing it like her.” Advertisement Continue reading the main story In 1955 she created the lead role of Jenifer in Michael Tippett’s “Midsummer Marriage.” During this period Ms. Sutherland gave birth to her only child, Adam, who survives her, along with two grandchildren and Mr. Bonynge, her husband of 56 years. Immediately after her breakthrough performances as Lucia in 1959, Ms. Sutherland underwent sinus surgery to correct persistent problems with nasal passages that were chronically prone to becoming clogged. Though it was a risky operation for a singer, it was deemed successful. In the early 1960s, using a home in southern Switzerland as a base, Ms. Sutherland made the rounds, singing in international opera houses and forming a close association with the Met, where she ultimately sang 223 performances. These included an acclaimed new production of “Norma” in 1970 with Ms. Horne in her Met debut, singing Adalgisa; Mr. Bonynge conducted.

There was also a hugely popular 1972 production of Donizetti’s “Fille du Régiment,” with Pavarotti singing the role of Tonio. Though never a compelling actress, Ms. Sutherland exuded vocal charisma, a good substitute for dramatic intensity. In the comic role of Marie in “La Fille du Régiment,” she conveyed endearingly awkward girlishness as the orphaned tomboy raised by an army regiment, proudly marching in place in her uniform while tossing off the vocal flourishes. Ms. Sutherland was plain-spoken and down to earth, someone who enjoyed needlepoint and playing with her grandchildren. Though she knew who she was, she was quick to poke fun at her prima donna persona. “I love all those demented old dames of the old operas,” she said in a 1961 Times profile. “All right, so they’re loony. The music’s wonderful.” Queen Elizabeth II made Ms. Sutherland a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1978. Her bluntness sometimes caused her trouble.

In 1994, addressing a luncheon organized by a group in favor of retaining the monarchy in Australia, she complained of having to be interviewed by a foreign-born clerk when applying to renew her passport, “a Chinese or an Indian — I’m not particularly racist — but find it ludicrous, when I’ve had a passport for 40 years.” Her remarks were widely reported, and she later apologized. In retirement she mostly lived quietly at home but was persuaded to sit on juries of vocal competitions and, less often, to present master classes. In 2004 she received a Kennedy Center Honor for outstanding achievement throughout her career. In 2008, while gardening at her home in Switzerland, she fell and broke both legs, which led to a lengthy hospital stay. Other sopranos may have been more musically probing and dramatically vivid. But few were such glorious vocalists.

After hearing her New York debut in “Beatrice di Tenda” at Town Hall, the renowned Brazilian soprano Bidú Sayão, herself beloved for the sheer beauty of her voice, said, “If there is perfection in singing, this is it.” A version of this article appears in print on October 12, 2010, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: JOAN SUTHERLAND, 1926-2010; Flawless Soprano and the Essence of Bel Canto. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

Question: Who composed the opera Lucia di Lammermoor?
Answer: Donizetti